Honor Road by Jason Ross (best non fiction books of all time TXT) 📕

“Cameron?” Isaiah moaned.

He ignored the plea. Cameron’s every sense tuned to the minuscule sounds of the thicket. The fall of a stick. The chirrup of a bird. The susurration of the cottonwood leaves. Nobody came to kill him.

“Cameron?”

He had no idea what ground he’d covered and what ground he hadn’t. From face-in-the-dirt, he had the opposite of a bird’s-eye-view. He’d been slinking around for thirty minutes. He had no better plan, so he slid toward Isaiah’s voice—fifty yards away.

“Cameron, is that you?”

It dawned on him that his biggest threat, at this moment, was probably Isaiah. His compatriot was undoubtedly pointing a gun in his direction.

Two down. One to go. If he found one more guy, he’d be good.

Cameron loud-whispered, “Don’t shoot Isaiah. I’m coming to you. Cover me.”

He army-crawled into a dried-out side stream of the river, carved in the sand and lately filled with Indiangrass. He slid through a wet patch, reached for the edge of the depression and touched cloth. The gun scrabbled into his hands and he shoved at the body with the flash suppressor at the end of the barrel. The corpse budged, then rolled back to its resting position. Cameron exhaled and wiped his forehead with his arm. It was the third guy, dead.

“Isaiah, I’m right here. Don’t shoot.”

“Okay. I got two of ‘em,” Isaiah yelled back.

Encouraged, Cameron climbed up into a crouch, then onto his feet. His head spun round-and-round as blood rushed to his legs and away from brain. He staggered up, focused his eyes with effort, and took in the thicket.

The rifle flew to his shoulder even before he knew why.

Another raider.

This man, in camouflage like the others, sprawled backward over a huge, fallen log. Some greedy monster had taken an immense bite out of his neck. Wet blood coated the cottonwood log. He lay back over the log an impossible, gymnastic contortion.

The adrenaline receded and left behind a fierce ringing in Cameron’s ears.

There’d been four raiders, not three. There must’ve been a man hanging back, shadowing his friends. Searching for followers. Covering their movement. It explained why they’d been so cavalier about making noise.

Fear induced vertigo struck Cameron and somewhere his body found reserves for yet another adrenaline dump. By some miracle the marauder following the group last night had not detected him and blown out his brain stem. His scheme to push the risk onto Isaiah had been a joke. He was alive by sheer, dumb, luck. He grabbed at a tree trunk to keep his feet under him.

“Cameron, I’m hurt.” Isaiah’s voice shook him out of his terror. He’d come very close to dying in the last twelve hours. He’d never been safe. Not for a second.

“They shot me. Twice, I think. Where’s Leah?”

Cameron slung the rifle across his back and looked Isaiah over. He was sitting up in a slump, against a dead log that smelled of mildew. There was a hand-size blood patch above his hip and blood dripping down his left pant leg. The gray tint to his face made his blond hair seem almost orange. He’d lost a lot of blood, probably out the back of the gut wound.

“Find Leah, now, please,” Isaiah plead. “We’ll take care of this later.” He waved the back of his hand across his belly and leg.

Cameron didn’t want to look for the girl. He was frankly afraid of what he might find. He shook his head, brought the gun around, and began to search the copse of trees in a more-or-less systematic fashion.

What if there were five of them?

He shook away the worry. A fifth guy would’ve fled.

What if Rockville heard the shots and sent a posse? Shots were common along the highway, and they were at least a half-mile from the town.

He couldn’t let minor threats paralyze him. He needed to get food in his gut before someone else came. He could accomplish anything with a little food in his belly.

Each raider had slept beside a rucksack loaded with food and critical gear—an inconceivable treasure. The packs had the look of well-oiled systems, perfected over the course of many raids, dozens of gunfights and lots of killing. These guys were all about “speed over security” as he’d once heard a Navy SEAL say in an action show. Cameron had won this conflict through sheer luck.

“And your luck tapped out, buddy,” he mumbled to the dead mens’ gear.

He consolidated the packs in the center of the sleeping area, not wanting to get the bounty too close to Isaiah. He tore into a package of fancy, health-nut fig bars and folded one into his mouth. Blueberry-flavored. The sugars and carbs caused a pain storm on his teeth and tongue. He swallowed. The pilot wave of energy traveled down his esophagus and hit his stomach like fireworks. He could feel calories pulsing into his bloodstream. Moments later, the tiny packets of energy set his cells on fire. Arms, legs, chest. His head buzzed with ragged power. Calories! His body trembled.

“Did you find her?” Isaiah’s shout broke with a cry.

“I’m still looking,” Cameron answered. Searching for gear was the best way to search for the girl, too.

“Daddy?” the girl’s voice called out.

“I’m here, darling,” Isaiah shouted with relief. “Come to my voice. Hurry.”

Cameron unslung his rifle and moved to intercept her. Maybe she was being followed. He paused, turned back to the pile of packs and grabbed two more fig bars and stuffed them in his pocket with the energy bar from earlier.

The girl thrashed through the underbrush. Cameron crouched and listened. No one followed.

He found her at her father, fretting over his wounds. Isaiah lifted his shirt and she stared at the small hole, pulsing slightly in a fleshy pool of watery blood.

“I think it’ll be all right. It barely hurts,” Isaiah comforted his daughter.

“Eat these. Both of you.” Cameron handed a fig bar to Leah, then one to Isaiah. Leah took hers and held it in front of her with stunned confusion in her eyes. Isaiah didn’t